La La How The Life Goes On

That’s what my Scottish parents called the Royals and their endless progeny in Britain. You know, “part of the horsey set.” People who ride, own and otherwise interact with horses in a non-agricultural manner. Usually said semi-disparagingly to imply upperclass inbreeding to the point of the humans themselves resembling their horses (my father’s case in point: Princess Margaret). Well, Bambina has decided that she LOVES horse riding. We let her take a lesson just so she could see if she liked it, and it has been full steam ahead since then. So much so, in fact, that she is in her first show tomorrow. Can it be long before my teeth start getting bigger and my laugh begins to sound like a whinny?

Speaking of gigantic livestock, I’m still fat. Yeah yeah, “it’s prednisone fat.” But it’s fat all the same. My stomach and its prodigious rolls of adiposity don’t know that it’s supposed to be the okay/medically-sanctioned kind of fat. Neither do my damn jeans. As many of you know, I was a fat kid for a few years. Can I tell you how much I’d forgotten about the day to day of being overweight? The discomfort, the chafing, the constant pulling of the clothes to keep them hanging right, the fatigue of carrying around excess baggage, the psychological weight of feeling like your mind is out of sync with your body. I cannot believe I ever forgot it, and it makes me incredulous that anyone would be okay with it. Not in a judgmental way; I tried to lose weight for a long time, and no one knows better than I that all of your “stuff” needs to align–physically, mentally, socially– before you can take the weight off and keep it off. So I say this without an atom of judgment or disapproval, and with a good dose of sympathy: after the past year of being overweight, I just do not know how overweight people do it.

Perhaps it’s akin to my back fractures. I had back pain for 7 months. Only after I had the surgery did I fully comprehend what I’d been living without all that time. I hadn’t lifted and hugged my daughters in more than 200 days. I hadn’t been able to lie down in bed with Bambina and read her a story while cuddling for almost 30 weeks. I hadn’t been able to dance along with Baby Sister and her Wiggles DVDs for 7 long months. But while it was going on, I almost didn’t notice all the things I was missing, their avoidance being a necessity. So maybe I just didn’t let myself dwell on all the “can’ts” because it would have been too damn depressing to contemplate. Likewise, I wonder if people who are heavy have forgotten (or perhaps have never known) what life can be like at a more manageable weight. How you don’t get out of breath after one stairwell. How you don’t have to constantly adjust your clothes–or wear very large loose garments. How you don’t have to think about your legs rubbing together while walking. How you can have so much energy for your kids when you’re not carting around excess weight. All I know is that I am ready to get back to my usual life the second I can offload my ballast. Whenever that is. In the meantime, I will be the person at the horse show wearing a feedbag. 🙂